Part 15

She spoke so earnestly that I could not refuse her request, but did as she desired me at once, the woman I had seen, screaming some unintelligible sentence after me as I ascended the stairs. But when I found myself alone, the scene I had witnessed recurred rather unpleasantly to my memory. It was an extraordinary circumstance to see a stranger at all within our walls; still more so a woman, and one who dared to address my mother in loud and reproachful tones. And I was now sixteen, able and willing to defend her against insult, why, therefore, had she not claimed my services to turn this woman from the house, instead of sending me upstairs, as she might have done little Violet, until she had settled the matter for herself? But then I remembered the trouble my mother had taken to get my father and me away from Lilyfields that morning, and could not believe but that she had foreseen this visitation and prepared against it. It was then as I had often supposed. She had relations of whom she was ashamed, with whom she did not wish my father to come in contact. Poor mother! If this was one of them, I pitied her! I believed the story I had created myself so much, that I accepted it without further proof, and when my mother entered the room, and laying her head against my shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break, I soothed her as well as I was able, without another inquiry as to the identity of the person with whom I had found her.

“Don’t tell your father, Charlie!” she said, in parting. “Don’t mention a word to anyone of what you have seen to-day. Promise me, darling! I shall not be happy till I have your word for it!”

And I gave her my word, and thought none the less of her for the secrecy, although I regretted it need be.

Not long after this my father articled me, at my own request, to an architect in London, and my visits to the happy home at Lilyfields became few and far between. But I had the consolation of knowing that all went well there, and that I was taking my place in the world as a man should do.

I had worked steadily at my profession for two years, and was just considering whether I had not earned the right to take a real good long holiday at Lilyfields (where Violet, now a fine girl of seven years old, was still my favourite plaything), when I received a letter from the doctor of the village--desiring me to come home at once as my father was ill, beyond hope of recovery. I knew what that meant--that he was already gone; and when I arrived at Lilyfields I found it to be true; he had died of an attack of the heart after a couple of hours’ illness. The shock to me was very great. I had never loved my father as I did my mother; the old childish recollections had been too strong for that, but the last few years he had permitted me to be very happy, and I knew that to _her_ his loss must be irreparable. Not that she exhibited any violent demonstration of grief. When I first saw her, I was surprised at her calmness. She sat beside my father’s body, day and night, without shedding a tear; and she spoke of his departure as quietly as though he had only gone on a journey from which she fully expected him to return. But though her eyes were dry, they never closed in sleep, and every morsel of colour seemed to have been blanched out of her face and hands. So the first day passed, and when the second dawned, I, having attained the dignity of eighteen years, thought it behoved me to speak of my late father’s affairs and my mother’s future.

“Where is father’s will, mother?”

“He never made one, dear!”

“Never made a will! That was awfully careless.”

“Hush, Charlie!”

She would not brook the slightest censure cast on her dead love.

“But there _must_ be a will, mother.”

“Darling, there is none! It was the one thought that disturbed his last moments. But I am content to let things be settled as they may.”

“Lilyfields will be yours of course, and everything in it,” I answered decidedly. “No one has a better right to them than you have. And you and Violet will live here to your lives’ end, won’t you?”

“Don’t ask me, dear Charlie, don’t think of it--not just yet at least! Let us wait until--until--it is all over, and then decide what is best to be done!”

Before it was all over; matters were decided for us.

It was the day before the funeral. I had just gone through the mournful ceremony of seeing my father’s coffin soldered down, and, sad and dispirited, had retired to my own room for a little rest, when I heard the sound of carriage wheels up on the gravel drive. I peered over the window blind curiously, for I had never heard of my father’s relations, and had been unable in consequence to communicate with any of them. A lumbering hired fly, laden with luggage, stopped before the door, and from it descended, to my astonishment, the same woman with the fiery red face whom I had discovered in my mother’s company two years before. I decided at once that, whatever the claims of this stranger might be, she could not be suffered to disturb the widow in the first agony of her crushing grief, and, quick, as thought, I ran down into the hall and confronted her before she had entered the house.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” I commenced, “but Mrs. Vere is unable to see anyone at present. There has been a great calamity in the family, and--”

“I know all about your calamity,” she interrupted me rudely, “if it were not for that I shouldn’t be here.”

“But you cannot see Mrs. Vere!” I repeated.

“And pray who _is_ Mrs. Vere?” said the woman.

“My mother,” I replied proudly, “and I will not allow her to be annoyed or disturbed.”

“Oh! indeed, young man. It strikes me you take a great deal of authority upon yourself; but as I mean to be mistress in my own house, the sooner you stop that sort of thing the better! Here! some of you women!” she continued, addressing the servants who had come up from the kitchen to learn the cause of the unusual disturbance. “Just help the flyman up with my boxes, will you--and look sharp about it.”

I was thunderstruck at her audacity.

For a moment I did not know what to answer. But when this atrocious woman walked past me into the parlour, and threw herself into my dead father’s chair, I followed her, and felt compelled to speak.

“I do not understand what you mean by talking in this way,” I said. “Mrs. Vere is the only mistress in this house, and--”

“Well, young man, and suppose _I_ am Mrs. Vere!”

“I can suppose no such thing. You cannot know what you are talking about. My mother--”

“_Your mother!_ And pray, what may your name be and your age?”

“Charles Vere; and I was eighteen last birthday,” I said, feeling compelled, I knew not by what secret agency, to reply.

“Just so! I thought as much! Well, I am Mrs. Vere, and I am your mother!”

“_My mother!_ You must be mad, or drunk! How dare you insult the dead man in his coffin upstairs. My mother! Why, she died years ago, before I can remember.”

“Did she? That’s the fine tale madam, who’s been taking my place here all this time has told you, I suppose. But I’ll be even with her yet. I’m your father’s widow, and all he’s left behind him belongs to me, and she’ll be out of this house before another hour’s over her head, or my name’s not Jane Vere!”

“You lie!” I exclaimed passionately. This tipsy, dissipated, coarse-looking creature, the woman who bore me, and whom I had believed to be lying in her grave for sixteen years and more. Was it wonderful that at the first blush my mind utterly refused to credit it? The angry accusation I have recorded had barely left my lips, when I looked up and saw _my mother_--the woman who had come as an angel of light into my father’s darkened home, and watched over me with the tenderest affection since--standing on the threshold, pale and peaceful in her mourning garb, as the Spirit of Death itself.

“Mother! say it is not true,” I cried as I turned towards her.

“Oh, Charlie, my darling boy! my brave, good son! Be quiet! bear it like a man; but it _is_ true!”

“This--this woman was my father’s _wife!_”

“She was!”

“And _you_, mother!” I exclaimed in agony.

“I was only the woman that he loved, Charlie,” she answered, with downcast eyes. “You must think no higher of me than that!”

“I think the very highest of you that I can. You were my father’s loving companion and friend for years: you saved his life and his reason! You were _his_ true, true wife, and _my_ mother. I shall never think of you in any lower light.”

My emotion had found vent in tears by that time. It was all so new and so horrible to believe, and my mother’s hand rested fondly on my bowed head.

Then that other woman, whose existence I can never recall without a shudder, seized her hateful opportunity, and levelled the most virulent abuse at my poor martyr mother’s head. Words, such as I had never heard from a female before, rained thickly from her lips, until I lost sight of my own grief in my indignation at the shower of inuendoes which were being hurled at the person dearest to me of all the world.

“Be silent,” I said in a loud authoritative voice. “Were you twenty times my mother I would not permit you to speak as you are speaking now. If it is true that you were my father’s wife, why were you not in your proper place, instead of leaving your lawful duties to another?”

“Oh! madam here can answer that question better than myself. She knows well enough there was no room left for me where she was.”

“Untrue!” murmured my mother, but without any anger. “I would have shielded your character from your boy’s censure, as I have done for so long, but justice to the dead compels me to speak. You left this home desolate for many miserable years before I entered it. You deserted your child in his infancy, but your husband had so good and forgiving a heart that, when you cried to him for pardon, he took you back again and condoned your great offence, and therefore, when you left him a second time, the law contained no remedy for his wrong. He was compelled to live on--alone--dishonoured and comfortless, whilst you--you can best tell your son what your life has been since.”

“Anyway I am Mrs. Vere,” retorted the other, “and my husband has died intestate, and his property belongs to me, so I’ll thank you to take your brat, and clear out of my house before the sun goes down.”

“Oh! mother, this is infamous! It can never be!”

“It _must_ be, Charlie! It is the law. I knew all this when I consented to come here as your father’s wife. He never deceived me for a single moment; and if I have any regret that he put off providing against this contingency until it was too late, it is only for fear lest he should be regretting it also. But, my dear, _dear_ love!” she added in a lower tone, “I acquit you of this as of all things. I know your great love for me never failed, and I am content!”

“I will not believe it without further proof!” I exclaimed. “I will send Ellen at once for the solicitor. I cannot leave you alone with this horrid woman!”

“Hush, Charlie! she is your mother.”

“I will not acknowledge it. _You_ are the only mother I have ever had--the only mother I ever will have to my life’s end.”

Mr. Chorberry, the solicitor, came without delay, but he could give me no comfort. My poor father, by that strange indifference which has been the curse of so many, had put off making his will until it was too late, by reason of which he had left the one to whom he owed most in the world, the woman who had sacrificed friends and reputation to spend her life in a dull country home, administering to his pleasures, entirely dependant on her own resources for support--whilst the faithless, drunken creature he had the misfortune to be still chained to, walked in as the lawful wife, and claimed her share of the property. There was only one drop of balm in his decision. I, as my father’s son, shared what he had left behind him, but my angel mother and dear baby-sister were cast upon the world to shift for themselves.

And this was the law.

Oh, father! did your spirit look down from whichever sphere it had been translated to, and witness this?

“But, surely,” I said to Chorberry, “there can be no necessity for my mother leaving Lilyfields before the funeral?”

“Of course there is no necessity; but do you think it advisable, under the circumstances, that she should remain? Mrs. Vere has the legal power to enforce her departure, and I am afraid will not be slow to use it.”

My mother evidently was of one mind with him, for in an incredibly short space of time she had packed her belongings. Mrs. Vere, standing over her meanwhile to see she did not purloin anything from the house, and was waiting in the hall with little Violet, ready to go to the house of the clergyman’s wife, who, to her honour, having heard how matters stood at Lilyfields, had promptly sent my mother an invitation to the vicarage for the night.

“Are you ready, dear mother?” I said sadly, as I joined her in the hall, and drew her arm within my own.

“Well, Mr. Charles, I suppose I shall see you back again here before long?” screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Vere down the staircase.

I started.

_See me back!_ Was it possible that this woman believed I intended to make friends with her?

“We’ve been parted long enough, it strikes me,” she continued; “and now your father’s gone, and left no one behind him but yourself I suppose you’ll be looking out for my share of the property at my death, so we may as well let bye-gones be bye-gones, eh?”

“I wish for none of your property, madam,” I answered haughtily, “since the law gives it to you you are welcome to keep it.”

“Charlie, dear, think what you may be resigning,” urged my mother in my ear.

“I think of nothing but _you_, mother!”

“Hoity, toity! here’s manners,” cried the other woman. “You seem to forget, Master Charlie, that _I’m your mother!_”

Still holding my mother’s hand, I turned and confronted her.

“I forget nothing, madam! I wish I could; but I remember that _here_ stands the woman who laboured where you refused to work; who loved, where you had insulted and betrayed; who was faithful where you were faithless and undeserving; and, I say, that here stands my dead father’s true wife; and here stands, in God’s sight, _my mother!_ The blessing of man may not have sanctified her union, but the blessing of heaven shall be upon it and upon her--upon the creatures she rescued from a living death and upon the gracious hand with which she did it, until time itself shall be no more.”

So saying, I passed with _my mother_ beyond the gates of Lilyfields, to make a new life for her in some quiet spot where she might outlive her grief, and to repay, if possible, by the protection and support of my manhood, the love she had given me as a little child.

IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES.

Fever is raging in Brussels, and we are advised to quit the town as soon as possible. The question is, where to go. I suggest Rochefort in the Ardennes, having ascertained previously that the place is healthy; but my friends laugh at me. “Rochefort in February! We shall all be frozen to death.” “At least,” I argue, “there is pure air to breathe.” “But you can have no idea of the dulness,” is all the reply I receive; “Rochefort, with its one street and its one resident is bad enough in the summer, but at this season it will be unendurable.” Yet I am not to be turned from my purpose. I consider it is better to be frozen outwardly than burned inwardly; and that when one is flying from a pestilence, there is no time to regret the numerous pleasures left behind, or the few that loom in the future. And so we settle finally that, notwithstanding its promised disadvantages, we will thankfully accept the refuge Rochefort can afford us; and having made up our minds to go, we start twenty-four hours afterwards.

Being pent-up in a railway carriage with half-a-dozen manikins and womanikins, who suck oranges half the time, and obtrude their little persons between your view and the window the other half, is not perhaps the most favourable situation from which to contemplate the beauties of nature; for which reason, perhaps, it is as well that for the first part of our journey nature presents no beauties for our contemplation, and thereby our naturally mild tempers are prevented from boiling over. But when we have accomplished about fifty miles (Rochefort being distant from Brussels seventy miles) the country begins to assume a different and far more engaging aspect. The flat table-land, much of it marshy and undrained, which has scarcely been varied hitherto, gives place to swelling hills, half rock, half heather, and charming copses of fir, some of which are very extensive. The scenery becomes altogether more wooded and naturally fertile-looking; and houses and farmsteads lose all trace of British contiguity, and become proportionately interesting to curious English eyes. The train is an express, and as it dashes past the fragile, roughly-built little stations with which the road is bordered, it is amusing, or rather I should say it would be amusing, did it not suggest the idea of accidents, to see the signal-flags displayed by peasant-women in every variety of attitude and costume.

Here stands a stolid, solid Belgian girl, of eighteen years of age probably, and stout enough for forty, with a waist like a tar-barrel, and legs to match, who nurses her flag as if it were a baby, and gazes at the flying train with a countenance which could not be more impassive were it carved in wood. We have hardly finished laughing at her, when the train rushes past another station, at which appears a withered old crone, her head tied up in a coloured handkerchief, and her petticoats, cut up to her knees, looking cruelly short for such a wintry day, and displaying a pair of attenuated legs and feet for which the huge wooden _sabots_ look miles too large. She waves about the signal-flag in a nervous, agitated manner, which suggests the idea that she is not quite sure whether she has caught up the right one or not; but before we have time to be made uncomfortable by the fact, we are passing another of these Belgic “shanties,” at the door of which appears for a moment a middle-aged woman, who waves the signal at us in a menacing manner, and rushes back immediately to her children or her cooking.

Remembering our own signalmen, and the importance attached to their capabilities and education for the important office assigned them, it ceases to be a matter of amusement to see the lives of hundreds daily intrusted to the direction of such ignorant creatures as these. I suppose that “Monsieur,” smoking at his ease by the fireside in the little wooden station-house, directs the actions of his mother, wife, or daughter; but what are the authorities about not to insist on his performing his duty himself?

Notwithstanding all which, however, our train reaches Jemelle (the nearest station to Rochefort) in safety, and in the midst of a wind sufficient, if not to take our heads, to take our hats off, we and our belongings come to the ground. It takes some minutes to get our nine packages together; and when we present ourselves at the door of the diligence, it is nearly full. I look despairingly at the nurse and all the children, and decide that the younger members of the family must go by diligence, and the elder shall walk with me to Rochefort. But the Rochefortians are too polite to permit such a thing. Two of them insist upon getting out and giving up their places to the children. I protest against such a proceeding, of course, as in duty bound, but they will hear of no excuse, and start off walking at such a pace that they are out of sight before the diligence is set in motion. At last the luggage is all packed away on the top, and we are all packed away inside, in company with two gentlemen, who open the conversation pleasantly by asking us where we come from, and telling us that we must not expect to find Rochefort as large as Brussels, which, to say truth, we had scarcely anticipated. The talk becomes fragmentary, for the diligence rattles and jolts over the stony, hilly road, and the bells on the horses’ collars jangle in unison; and the baby is so enchanted with the noise, that he shouts till no one can be heard but himself. But twenty minutes’ purgatory brings us into a long, steep, narrow street, paved with stones, and bordered with grey-and-white houses; and I have hardly time to ask, “Is this Rochefort?” when the diligence draws up before a whitewashed house with a sign swinging before the door, and I am asked if we are for the Hôtel Biron. No, we are for the Hôtel de la Cloche d’Or; and as no one seems to be for the Hôtel Biron, the diligence continues to climb the stony street until it reaches the summit, and halts before the Hôtel de la Cloche d’Or.